


This Wall Between Us

by Spinning Place (buttercups3)



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 5.01 spoilers, AU, F/M, Fondling, Male Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/Spinning%20Place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the fire hadn’t interrupted Tony and Mary’s conversation in 5.01?</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Wall Between Us

**Author's Note:**

> For Anon upon request. Though it was unclear to me from the episode whether Mary and Tony's rooms were adjacent or Tony emerged from a stairwell, for purposes of this story we accept the former.

“No one must ever find out.”

A smile slowly intrudes upon the anxious twitching of his lips. His face has been utterly beyond his control since he entered her bedchamber. What he’s said—presumptuous, embarrassing, forward—has somehow managed to procure him exactly what he wanted, and he’s breathless at the strange success.

All day he’s been a jumble of nerves and false bravado. Every time he sets foot in Downton, he’s filled with terror it will be his last. Pathetic as it may be, he fears she’s become his sole reason for living. Since boyhood he’s been destructively obsessive, habitually reading the same Arthur Conan Doyle story over and over for months, a year even, or playing the same Scarlatti sonata into infinity until his distressed mother banished him outside. No one seemed to understand that the more familiar the thing, the more he cherished it. For all its imbecilic impracticality, single-minded devotion is simply the essence of Tony Foyle. And he has never been more consumed by anything than Lady Mary. 

Surely he’s grinning stupidly now, because her blushed lips have spread into a rather saucy smirk. Advancing upon him, her cool fingers rake audibly down his scratchy cheek. Tony’s the kind of man who really must shave twice a day to keep his face smooth.

Her hot breath is on his mouth, licked lips playing at his pout, while his arms migrate about her waist, pulling her in, propriety be damned. He’s instantly hard, too, which would normally be cause for shame except she’s jammed her slender thigh right into him and seems to be enjoying the throbbing result. She wraps her other leg around his, and as they open their mouths to taste each other, Tony realizes his hand has slid up her ribs unbidden, temptingly close to her breast. With his thumb he grazes the soft round through black satin, tracing the raised nipple to her infectious moan. It dawns on him that her arousal has soaked entirely through her thin robe into the leg of his trousers.

Nobility makes a man indulgent. Without giving it sufficient thought, his free hand wanders up the milky white of her thigh, finding her without drawers. As his lips trace a path down the arch of her neck, his middle finger strokes the wet, warmth of her and finally slips in. He feels her body gasp from the inside.

Abruptly she pushes him back with both hands, smart eyebrows arched in warning.

“Tony.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, brain abuzz.

Her cocoa-brown eyes, livened by the fire behind him, travel down to the glistening finger of his left hand and the bulge in his trousers, before sweeping back up to hold his gaze.

“You’d best be off before Bates looks in on you.”

“Of course. Goodnight, Mary.” He leans in to dot her cheek with a kiss before reaching for the cold metal of the doorknob.

“For the first time in my life, I’m envious of Bates. After all, _he_ gets to undress you,” she offers in parting.

Tony smiles over his shoulder and forces himself into the drafty hallway and his room next door. Within his fire smolders weakly, but before he can attend to that he must address a more pressing need.

With one hand on his straining erection and the other spread on their shared wall, he pretends she’s pressed against the other side, dipping her elegant fingers into herself. So silky and delicate from the inside, he would give anything to bury himself there, to lose himself…

His loins twist up and he scarcely extracts his handkerchief in time to come into the coarse cotton, bucking, knees quivering, the hand on the wall his only anchor. As he wipes himself clean, he keeps his eyes squeezed shut on the image of her tiny, creamy earlobe; how much he regrets not tasting it.

Finally, he lets himself hear her.

_You’re in love with me._

_Am I?_

He cringes, suddenly lonely, miserable.

_I think you’ve decided and I’m the winner._

_Well thank goodness that’s settled._

Does he truly believe that making love to her will answer her doubts? Or is sex simply the closest he’ll ever come to her love?

A rattling knock at the door nearly sends him out of his skin. _Bates_.

Tony thuds his forehead against the wall and fastening his trousers, he clears his throat, ready to play lord. “Come in.”


End file.
